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Pirate Party Wins At Least One European Parliament Seat
reeeh2000 writes "According to TorrentFreak, with half of polling stations now closed in Sweden, the Pirate Party has at least one guaranteed seat in the EU Parliament. Currently, the party is sitting with 7% of the vote. Depending on how the remaining districts voted, the Pirate Party could win another seat, for a total of two."
Reader lordholm adds a link to an article about exit polls in Sweden (link in Swedish) indicating that the Pirate Party will score two seats, writing "According to the polls, the pirate party is the largest party in the 18-30 year age category of voters. The final counting of votes (including around a million postal votes) will not be done until later next week."
It's one seat only for sure, however, it's my understanding that if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified (shudder), this opens up extra seats one of which would go to PP.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Hi,
the pirate party reached in germany 0,9%. Concerning lack of attention from the media, nearly non-existent funds and that stupid name, this is a very strong result for them.
CU, Martin
The Pirate Party got 7.1% wth 99.9% votes counted. This will give them 1 seat in the current parlament, 2 if the parlament gets extended according to the Lisbon treaty. /greger
You need to get at least 0.5% to get money from the state. approx 7 cent per vote. The total results can be found here: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/europawahlen/EU_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/b_tabelle_99.html
The 7.1% the Pirate Party got gives them one seat. See http://www.val.se/val/ep2009/valnatt/rike/index.html. It is incredibly unlikely that they'd get another one. Nearly all of the advance votes have already been counted.
The advance votes get sent to the polling station where one would have normally voted on and are counted as part of the normal counting process. See http://www.val.se/in_english/2009_ep_election/index.html. Those advance votes that aren't counted yet are those advance votes that were placed on Sunday, which are relatively few given Sunday was the ordinary election day.
Anyhow the final count will be available on Wednesday.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
The Pirate Party has an English page here that describes the basics. It has gained a lot of support after they, together with bloggers etc, managed to drum up public opposition to a wiretapping law, a law forcing ISPs to store traffic data, new copyright enforcement laws and the Pirate Bay trial. It has been growing since 2006 and spreads internationally, but this is the first parliamentary seat.
What concerns exactly? That it's illegal to download copyrighted stuff?
How about the fact that the penalties for "download[ing] copyrighted stuff" (which is not illegal except under specific circumstances; if it were always illegal, then everyone on Slashdot, and in fact almost everyone who uses the internet for anything, would be a criminal) are increasingly absurd and draconian, and in many cases the mere accusation of misconduct is sufficient to cause those penalties to be invoked? If that doesn't concern you, then you're not paying attention.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It might be interesting for slashdotters to know that the top-candidate of the Pirate Party is a free-software contributor, and has been working a lot previously to establish open standards and to fight software patents.
Their success might turn out to be an asset for free software as well as integrity.
Important stuff
I'm a content provider. I make games and sell them. Explain to me how I am an irrlevant middleman.
Who makes my games? pixies from space?
BTW, as a content producer, I disagree that p2p helps me in an way. In fact, I strongly refute that.
But as an angti-piracy poster here, I'll get modded as troll in the hope nobody will read a dissenting view on slashdot.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
This is such a joke. What civil liberties and personal rights are you voting to protect?
Well stuff like net neutrality and the right to privacy for one. Perhaps you should go read their views on various issues, I think you'll find there's a bit more to it that "LOL I WANT NEW TOM CROOSE MOOVIES".
How about my right to fucking run a game on a new computer when I purchase it? Or my right to fucking play a movie on a computer as well as on a Playstation? Or my fucking right to not be put in jail for 8 years like I'd murdered someone when I share a song with a friend? Or my fucking right to lend someone a music CD I'd bought? Or my fucking right to not have every action on the internet monitored like I was molesting little children for lunch?
What civil liberties and personal rights are you voting to protect?
The right to not have my traffic snooped on by the government as the FRA law in Sweden allows.
The right to not end up in a logfile whenever I send an email or visit a webpage, as the EU data retention directive wants.
The right to not have my internet cut off on the say-so of big copyright holding companies, as the French three-strikes law allows.
The right to not have my home searched and my assets seized on the say-so of copyright holders, as the Swedish IPRED law allows.
These things are important, not only for me, not only for those who download illegally, but for everyone who uses the internet. It is absolutely essential that civil liberties are respected on the internet and in real life. I didn't vote for the PirateParty so people can download stuff for free, I voted for them to stop the draconian surveillance bullshit that's being pushed in the name of stopping terrorism, child porn and illegal filesharing, but which in reality accomplishes nothing of the sort, it only lessens my right and my liberties.
The Pirate Party is nothing more than a bunch of college kids who want shit for free.
Interesting. Looking at their top 10 candidates for national government a few years back, you'll find that their average age is 38, and that 7/10 is 40 or older.
Among their top active public members, can be found an author, a musician, several with years of background in it consulting, one with a former background as director of a book publishing company, one with a background in national politics and a few with active backgrounds in other larger political parties.
So while some of the members are certainly cheap greedy kids as you describe them, clearly that does not constitute the entire party.
Something is very wrong with the Swedish political system.
Don't they know the opposition party is supposed to claim they oppose unpopular laws like those then do nothing about them once they're voted into power.
Yes, they did exactly that, but unfortunately for them there was a power change in Sweden a few years ago, and it became clear that many of unpopular laws being passed by this government had actually been drafted by the last one.
Wouldn't a 20 year copyright be more than enough for you, as a game developer? Because that's what the Pirate Party is advocating. Currently, in many countries, copyright extends up to 70 years after the death of the author. What sense is there in that? It's bullshit, plain and simple. And nobody's fighting against this crap in the political arena, nobody but the Pirate Party.
Simple. There are two factors:
1) The party was founded there. Give it some time in other countries. (At least we have 0.9% here in Germany. Which means they get the campaign money back.)
2) Education. The Nordic countries are known for their high education and open-mindedness. (Add Estonia to that group too.)
Here in Germany, people like to talk about "stupid Americans" or British. But in fact, we're nearly as stupid. And it gets worse every day.
Being dumb has kind of a "cool" and "you have to respect me" touch here. People nearly brag about their stupidity.
Which does not surprise me at all, with our drone promoting school system and the B-vitamin killing stuff that most people eat.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
While this is obviously a welcome result for those who support The Pirate Party, I think a lot of people posting here over-estimate the influence one MEP is going to have. At least I hope they do, because here in the UK, the British National Party just won a seat as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You can do whatever you want with your copy except copy it.
Not any more. Now you can only do what the copyright holders tell you to do with it. See: EULA, DRM, etc.
The Pirate Party registered in Finland last week as an official party. They will be running in the 2011 parliamental elections.